


The Face in the Mirror

by Drakochan



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Trans Giltine, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:20:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26294773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drakochan/pseuds/Drakochan
Summary: When Kheleb looked into a mirror, he didn't see the face he thought should be looking back... Until Giltine showed him what future could wait for him on the other side.Writing commission for @there4crowbar over on Twitter
Kudos: 4





	The Face in the Mirror

“You’re like me. You wear a skin that doesn’t belong. You see a face in the mirror that feels like a lie.” He hadn’t explained, but he could feel it somehow. Giltine had stared for but a moment, but cut to the heart of things without hesitation. His deft hands and dashing features made Kheleb’s heart flutter with anticipation, feeling his stomach twist into knots as the man flipped through some kind of mental book, muttering to himself. Finally those hands rested on his shoulders and turned him. The words rang through Kheleb’s mind, plaguing and needling. 

_“You’re like me.”_

Kheleb stared at the self in the mirror, the way he’d always seen himself, even when every other mirror showed a lie, and he didn’t even realize when the tears began to stream down his face, his hands moving up to touch, but of course reality crashed down. The body he wore was still not one he saw himself in. And unlike the women around him, he wished not for beauty to rival the most legendary of mages… He only wished to be himself. His hands quickly moved away from his chest.

The man that looked back at him was handsome, but not devastatingly beautiful like the people he saw in the halls of Aretuza. He didn’t look away though, as he spoke. “Why am I so plain looking.. I thought you made us beautiful.”

“But it is the you that you see in your heart, is it not?” Giltine said with a wry smile, glimpsed just over his shoulder in the mirror. “I can tweak a bit…” He flicked his wrist with a nod at the glass, and Kheleb turned to look at him. When he turned back he startled, the man in the mirror like something out of a fairy tale. Tall, with fine features and sharp cheekbones. Giltine was right. This wasn’t him.

“Put it back to the one before?” He said, reaching out to touch the mirror, a smile crossing his features. When he blinked, it went back. He’d hated his hair since he was a child, mousy brown and his plain brown eyes, but most of all he’d hated the curves he’d grown into as he aged, curves that made people stare at him and see a person that always felt like an ill-fitting tunic. 

“Will that suit? I can tweak here and there. We should be sure you stand out as much as your sisters will, I think. But you will turn heads, or I’ve failed.”

He nodded. He still had brown eyes and mousy brown hair, but his shoulders were broader, and there was just a hint of scruff along his jaw… And he wouldn’t dare say ‘plain’ but there was a subtle charm to the face staring back at him. It seemed right, it _felt_ right to see that in the mirror. This was the person he’d always known he was. No more would people address him as a name that he’d never felt was his. The girl he saw in the mirror would be gone, stripped away to reveal who he truly was. Who he always had been. 

Now he just had to survive the magic.


End file.
